Hyderabad: Cybercriminals drained Rs 881.72 crore from Telangana residents between January 1 and September 30, 2026, the Telangana Cyber Security Bureau (CSB) has said, and the scammers are still using the same playbook: fake online trading platforms, bogus investment schemes and so-called digital arrests.

The figure is lower than the damage recorded in the same nine-month window last year, when residents lost Rs 1,104.42 crore. But lower does not mean safe. By simple arithmetic, this year’s losses are roughly 20 per cent below last year’s total, and still large enough to shock anyone who has a bank account in the state.

The money is disappearing by the minute. Spread across the period, the CSB’s figures work out to an average loss of Rs 4.05 crore per day, Rs 16.86 lakh per hour and Rs 28,000 per minute. Those numbers come from last year’s losses, and the bureau’s data makes clear that the pace of theft has stayed brutal. Every hour of the day, somewhere in Telangana, someone is handing over savings to a criminal who never intended to deliver anything.

The fraud methods are not new, but they are effective. Criminals lure victims with promises of quick returns through online trading and investment schemes. In digital arrest scams, they impersonate officials and frighten victims into transferring money. Once the cash leaves a victim’s account, it can vanish within minutes, which is why speed matters so much in these cases.

Police are catching some of the money, but not most of it. Telangana police have frozen funds in the accounts linked to these frauds. Between January 2025 and September 2025, Rs 183.11 crore was frozen. In the first nine months of 2026, another Rs 260.30 crore was held back. That is roughly 30 per cent of the amount lost this year, a larger share than last year’s freeze rate of about 17 per cent of that period’s losses. The improvement is real, but the gap between what was lost and what was recovered remains enormous.

The report also argues that the government has failed to make enough people aware of cybercrime. That criticism lands hard when set against the scale of the losses. Awareness is the cheapest defence available, and every rupee lost is a rupee that a warning could have saved.

What this means for Telangana readers. These are not distant numbers from a faraway case file. Every figure in the CSB’s report reflects residents of this state, from Hyderabad to the districts, who trusted a phone call, a message or a polished app and paid for it. The fact that the losses continue into a second year of record-keeping should worry anyone who uses online banking, UPI or investment apps here.

The state’s response has taken the form of a month-long awareness campaign. The Cyber Security Masotsavam began on October 1 at Necklace Road in Hyderabad and ran across the state. Community meetings were held in educational institutions and public spaces to explain how to spot cyber threats. Organisers used the Bathukamma and Navratri festivals as platforms for outreach, and the bureau counted 4,248 awareness programmes in total.

DG Shikha Goel, the state’s Director General of police, announced that the programmes will not stop with the festival season. The campaign will continue throughout the year.

The awareness programmes will be continued throughout the year, DG Shikha Goel said.

What you should do now. Treat any unexpected call, message or link that asks for money, OTPs or banking details as a potential scam. Be especially wary of anyone claiming to be a police or government official who threatens arrest over a phone call. Check your bank statements regularly, and if you suspect fraud, report it to the authorities immediately, because the freezing of funds depends on how quickly the complaint is filed. Families should also talk to older relatives, who are often targeted, before a criminal does.

The message from the data is blunt. Telangana residents lost more than Rs 880 crore in nine months, and the criminals did not slow down simply because the awareness campaign ended its opening phase. The only real protection is a habit of doubt, applied every time money is asked for, whether the request comes through a screen, a phone or a message that looks official.